Here's one thats not gonna break!

Reviews: Fiskars 9234 62-Inch Pruning Stik

I had a cable driven long pruner, and besides the fact that it ... near broke my hand to clip a large branch with it, the thing was fragile. I used to live on nearly and acre of property with a row of pines along the back. They would get all brown near the bottom so I would try and prune them up to about the point where they could get enough sun to stay green. To do that you need a pruner with a little reach to it?
I saw this model on TV and hunted it down, finding it first on Amazon. I could barely believe the price quoted on the TV show, (it wasn't a commercial, it was a how-to show) they said the stick only cost about [$$$]. Its not quite that cheap, but the quality here is excellent. It uses a chain, not unlike a bike chain, to drive the extended cutter. It uses a slider, leverage system to pull the chain to make the cuts. The cutting blades themselves are very sharp and can be adjusted to any angle. This becomes an important concern when you have about a dozen pine trees to trip.

The stick will also do fine when you don't need the extended length. Remember those hedge trimmers that looked like a huge pair of scissors? I used to hurt my wrists every year, trying to get enough momentum to trim the bushes in front of the house I was renting. If you tried to cut too, slow it would get stuck, too fast, and the handles would stop abruptly hurting my wrists! This cutter, although smaller than a hedge trimmer, cut so quick and easily that it made trimming the bushes a pleasure. I could even get lazy, and sit down in a chair, and do them from a distance. Try that with your electric model! The bushes never shaped up so well before.

The blades will cut close to a one-inch branch, and I haven't had to sharpen it yet. Just keep the chain free of dirt, and keep a little mower oil on it, or cycle spray and it continues to work like new. Sometimes they just make a tool that becomes the defacto standard for a while, and for my money this is it. Don't risk cutting your arm off with a chainsaw. If you've got a little pruning to do, get this Pruning Stik and start clipping away.